Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Baby Faces Busy Bag (For a One Year Old)

Today we're swapping ideas with Life Over C's and Adventure in a Box to share busy bag ideas for one year olds. I've created Busy Bags and Boxes for Big Brother a couple of different times before, check out this post or this one for some of those ideas, but this was the first time I've made a busy bag for Little Brother. I found it an interesting challenge to think of what might interest a one year old in a bag.

We've started to encourage Little Brother to work on identifying parts of the face which inspired me to create a "baby faces" busy bag.

First I made a face with removable parts using craft felt.

Next I created a "squish bag" featuring Little Brother. I printed out a photo of him and ran it though the laminator. I added it to a gallon ziplock bag along with almost one whole bottle of clear

hair gel (bought from the dollar store) and a handful of silver glitter. I used colorful duct tape to seal the top of the bag.

The final addition to our busy bag was our much loved family copy of the board book Baby Faces.

When I gave Little Brother the bag he instantly started engaging with the book, as I mentioned it's been well read by both boys. After I snuck it away from him he started playing with the squish bag. Although he's using limited words, he definitely was trying to talk to me about the picture as he squished it.

He played with the felt face a little, but was unfortunately distracted by his older brother and didn't stick with it for long.

I was excited to see how he engaged with the bag, and it got me thinking about other bags we could create. I will definitely be creating more for him. I'm also planning on putting his simple straw drop activity, which is still a big hit, into a bag.